Gurus o’ Gold: After Toronto (Part 1)

Things have changed a bit since The Gurus last opined before the Toronto International Film Festival.

First, some internal business. Guru Dave Karger has moved on from Entertainment Weekly to get into a video-focused deal at Fandango. And we welcome back veteran Guru, Glenn Whipp, who is now at the Los Angeles Times.

Back to handicapping…

The Gurus picked 15 unranked choices each for Best Picture, with seven titles getting a vote from every one of the participating Gurus. Three of those movies, still unseen, remain in the Top Six. Three—Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Moonrise Kingdom—remain in the Top Ten. And Anna Karenina falls to #11.

The big movers are Silver Linings Playbook and Life of Pi.

Dropping off the chart with no one casting a vote for them—with only 10 picks per Guru in this round—are Cloud Atlas, The Company You Keep, Hope Springs, The Hunt, Hyde Park On The Hudson, Inside Llewyn Davis, Killing Them Softly, Not Fade Away, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Rust & Bone, Stories We Tell, To The Wonder, Trouble With The Curve, On The Road, and Arbitrage.

This morning, a look at the new Best Picture chart and Longshot picks in the acting categories, led by Jack Black, Richard Gere, and Emmanuelle Riva.

5 Responses to “Gurus o’ Gold: After Toronto (Part 1)”

those longshots are mostly funny, a lot of frontrunners there. Especially Riva, who is probably in third position right now behind Wallis and Lawrence.

Is the Hobbit Hugo 2.0? A film people have decided not to anticipate, but actually gathers tons of noms throughout the season after it drops?

Remember, The Hobbit opens the Friday before balloting begins, it isn’t opening against any other films, nothing else in limited, nothing else wide, it owns that weekend, a weekend which is all the more crucial with the early balloting. It’ll be riding a wave of popularity and goodwill going into the opening of balloting and I expect it will overperform at the oscars because of that.

You’ve said in the past that Oscar won’t even consider Neil Patrick Harris to host the show because he’s a TV guy and they only hire film people.

Well McFarlane has fewer film credentials than Harris and is completely a TV guy.

Does the boneheaded decision of McFarlane mean NPH has a chance in the future? This pick seems like they’re going to give it the old college try one more time. I mean the philosphy of, ‘let’s try and repeat the Hathaway/Franco experiment; let’s chase the elusive teen boys and tweenty boys demographics, because this time it’ll work!’